


Me and the Devil

by lordelannette



Series: Dark Steve Rogers Fics [6]
Category: Captain America - All Media Types, Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Bottom Bucky Barnes, Dark Steve Rogers, Devil Steve Rogers, Horror, Human Bucky Barnes, M/M, Promised Bucky Barnes, Religion Aspects, Steve Rogers is the Devil, Top Steve Rogers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-23
Updated: 2020-02-23
Packaged: 2021-02-28 06:22:39
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,836
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22869307
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lordelannette/pseuds/lordelannette
Summary: The Devil’s kissing a line down his throat. He’s drunk with it, the divine pleasure of having this. As though having the Devil there, cool and gentle as rain, wasn’t proof enough of God.Bucky lets his head tip back. “Jesus Christ , yeah, that’s—”It happens too fast, and suddenly the Devil’s grabbing Bucky by the back of his neck and yanking his head up. “No,” the Devil snarls. His eyes are slitted and poison-yellow; glowing faintly with that hard, predatory light. “No one else. No other names. Not His, not— not anyone’s but mine."Bucky exhales shakily, and does as he’s told.
Relationships: James "Bucky" Barnes/Steve Rogers
Series: Dark Steve Rogers Fics [6]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1457959
Comments: 42
Kudos: 458





	Me and the Devil

**Author's Note:**

> (me hiding, because I still need to update Brooklyn Syndrome but I'm posting this instead)
> 
> Also, song inspo for this was 'Me and the Devil' by Soap&Skin

Bucky shuts his eyes when he kisses the Devil. 

It’s not that he wants to, rather, it’s  _ him  _ who makes him do it. 

Then again, it is Bucky’s fault as to why he must keep his eyes closed. It had taken just one time for Bucky to flinch at the sight in front of him, when the Devil suddenly drew back, only for the quickest of seconds-- almost too fast for any time Bucky could process-- to then lean forward once again. With powers that Bucky knew not of, his vision had been turned black by the Devil’s will and since then, Bucky’s eyes turn off just as the Devil leans in, right before smooth lips press against his own. 

When his sight gets taken, his other senses take over. 

There’s been too many times when he’s touched his tongue to the Devil’s and tasted something bitter, a metallic tang that has Bucky’s insides lighting up; or when he lets his hand trail down the Devil’s back and the Devil’s spine turns into a ridge of scales and hard bone under his palm. Sometimes Bucky’s fingertips brush against feathers and scales, instead of skin. Once, he put his hand to the Devil’s neck, and it burned, like Bucky was holding his hand out into the direct flames of a fire, and he’d jerked his hand away on instinct, cursing until the Devil claimed his lips and drowned out his cries. 

He’s always known the Devil was something else, something not entirely human, but Bucky doesn’t mind kissing that thing, doesn’t mind feeling it or tasting it either. In fact, in comparison to the short list of his flings from the past, he’d prefer the Devil above them all. In a heartbeat. 

But kissing and holding and tasting is one, seeing it shift and change under his hand is another thing entirely, apparently. When he asked the Devil to stop making him blind, the Devil only smiled, and shook his head lightly and professed he didn’t want Bucky to go crazy trying to see him shift, or else Bucky’s eyes would melt and be singed forever and that was something he didn’t want to happen. 

So it’s in moments like now, when he’s being consumed by the Devil-- when he can only breathe when the Devil’s lips are on him, breathing the life into him-- that Bucky wishes so desperately that he could see. Just a small peak of what touches him, of what surrounds him. It’s the not knowing that drives him truly crazy. The changes are too enticing for him  _ not  _ to question.

“Stop that,” Bucky mutters, tangling his fingers in the Devil’s hair only for the hair to disappear a minute later, and his palm rests against something ice cold. In Bucky’s head, there’s a list of all the things the Devil is like and day by day, he keeps adding to it: snake, bird, snow, rain, ash, winter, day, night… all images that made Bucky’s pulse pound in excitement. 

“Come on,” he mumbles. The Devil’s jaw seems solid enough under Bucky’s mouth, but there’s still that strange snow-melt wetness curling around his fingers. “Stay in one shape. Please.”

“You’re distracting me,” the Devil says, a voice that is deep and strong, yet, there’s a skip in there too, showing just how distracted he really is, and it makes Bucky grin. 

He feels the air shift when the Devil huffs a breath against Bucky’s cheek. There’s a cold-burning spark that trails, deliberately, down Bucky’s spine, a tease of a feeling and Bucky’s response is a muffled gasp and to dig his fingers into the body above him. 

The Devil makes one of those low, non-human noises-- an almost growl-- and Bucky grins even wider.

“Like I said,” the Devil murmurs after a moment, sounding breathless. “You’re distracting me.”

Bucky tries that again and when he puts his hand on the Devil’s thigh, he finds himself palming something unyielding-- metallic, he’d realize later, because that’s what his fingers smell like afterwards, copper and aluminum. But Bucky’s lost in the sensation himself so he just hums, and scrapes a thumbnail across the hard surface.

The Devil makes a sound that Bucky’s heard hundreds of times from him, but never from anyone human. Partly like he’s trying to swallow his own tongue and also singing through gritted teeth, and maybe something else, lower and harsh as the scrape of metal on metal. It makes Bucky shiver and break out in a cold-sweat, every bit of his skin suddenly alive and trembling.

Afterward, when his eyes are open and clear, and he’s laid out naked, sated, and full, and the Devil is pressed fully against his chest, in his human form, Bucky can’t get the words out of his head. He distracts the Devil himself, what person  _ wouldn’t  _ take some pride in that? 

Bucky knows he’s not bad-looking. He has his Dad’s blue-grey eyes and a body that is slim and ‘gracefully lithe’ as the Devil told him long ago. He can pull noises out of the Devil that aren’t human or even close to it, like he’s coming apart in places Bucky can’t see or understand. But to be distracting enough to make the Devil forget his skin entirely? It makes him feel invincible, like he could conquer the entire world, easily so. 

He can’t help but picture black wings stretched out, shielding them from the world. They must be powerful things, heavy too, but he’s not entirely sure the Devil’s an angel at all, or anymore. In Sunday school they used to teach how Satan was kicked out of heaven by the good angels of the Lord, and how he fell down, down, down to the Earth, banished, and left bleeding and broken with no one around. Bucky used to think how sad it must have been and that if God was good, surely he wouldn’t be mean like that, but the teachers always shook their heads, adamant that the Devil was a bad, cruel, horrible man who challenged the almighty God and got what he deserved.

The Devil that he was taught about, doesn’t match the man laying on him. No, this being takes Bucky with gentleness, spreads him open with fingers that may be claws at time, or talons, and when he licks his way into Bucky’s mouth, nothing vile ever possesses him, only the uncontrollable need for  _ more _ . 

What do they know anyways? At one point in time, they’d have tortured him alive for being one of ‘those boys’ who was eager to get on his knees for another man and to be taken, fucked in the ass by a beautiful, thick cock that would stretch him open and fill him to the brim. 

So yeah, fuck those people. 

When the Devil’s mouth covers Bucky’s nipple, Bucky lets out a shuddering breath. He lets his eyes flutter shut and smiles, knowing that the Devil likes to look at him like this, so undone and writhing in pleasure. So let him look. Let him watch as Bucky shifts his head to pull the Devil’s fingers into his mouth, sucking long and hard. Bucky imagines looking up at the Devil through his eyelashes, watching him watch himself. Watching him get distracted. 

He wonders how long it’d take. The eyes first— soft blue transforming into poisonous yellow. The Devil in Bucky’s imagination blinks, and they’re suddenly slitted, flat snake-eyes.

The mouth next. The Devil wets his lower lip with a forked tongue and breathes in sharply as Bucky’s heart picks up. 

“Bucky,” the Devil says, and he sounds unsteady already just as Bucky’s vision turns black once more. “You best be sure. You ought to know what it is you’re doing.”

“I never know what it is I’m doing,” Bucky mumbles around the fingers in his mouth, ones that have turned sharp and knick his tongue, filling it up with that coppery taste. He can feel his blood heating up with how the Devil’s other hand moves to the inside of his thigh. “I haven’t let that stop me yet.”

He’s not sure what would go next, the skin maybe. All that surprisingly golden skin shivering, and maybe hardening into scales. Or maybe it’s the horns next, the Devil ducking his head and straightening up with those hard, powerful twisting bones protruding from his forehead.

Bucky supposed in the end, it doesn’t really matter what the Devil looks like because Bucky wants him either way. 

The Devil’s hand moves to cup Bucky’s jaw. The touch is cool, almost frozen, but it’s hesitant how his fingers breeze against his skin, leaving him aching. Throbbing for more. 

“I’m not made of glass,” Bucky whispers, and he can feel the Devil’s smile as the being leans down and trails his nose up Bucky’s cheek. 

“Yes,” the Devil murmurs against the shell of his ear. “You are. Fragile as glass…”

“ ‘m not,” Bucky breathes out. He wants to be defiant, wants the man above him to really show him what it would be like to be made of glass but Bucky knows he never will, even if Bucky asked. He’s no fool either. He knows the Devil could probably kill him with one look, one breath into his mouth that would seal Bucky’s fate and leave him in an eternity of doom but Bucky trusts him nonetheless. Completely. 

“Don’t argue,” the Devil says again, and his voice is lower, softer, humming with a strange note that makes Bucky shiver and his pulse pick up again, pounding at his throat. “Are you ready to go again?”

“You sure?” Bucky asks, grinning, and the Devil huffs amusedly. They both know he never tires. Even once he’s fucked Bucky within an inch of his life, he’s always ready to go again. The Devil is always ready. 

“Yes.”

“Because you have to be sure,” Bucky says, “I wouldn’t want anyone to think I took advantage.”

The Devil laughs then, and hands get planted on either side of Bucky’s head before something else wraps itself around Bucky’s wrists, pinning them to the bed. “I am very certain,” the Devil says. 

“I’m just asking, because—”

“Bucky. Be quiet.”

Bucky grins just before his thighs get hefted up and the Devil presses in. 

* * *

The thing is, when Bucky first saw the Devil, he didn’t know what he had gotten himself into. Partly because the man, who had seemed to have been formed out of Bucky’s own dreams, stood tall and strong, with blond hair and blue eyes that had seeped into Bucky’s soul and tugged on something almost jarringly, like an infection. 

He had been at his grandma’s funeral when it happened. His grandma had been a bitter old woman, and while Bucky had felt…  _ something  _ toward her, he had just stared at the casket, sitting in one of the front pews, and listened to his Mom’s soft cries while his own stayed dry as a desert. It had been boring, quite honestly, and there was only so many times that he could count the flowers surrounding the casket and staring down at his shoes, tracing the pattern of the carpet with his eyes, that he could take. 

But when  _ he  _ showed up, Bucky felt his presence immediately. It started with a cold sensation at the back of his neck, the weight of eyes on him almost too much for him to handle. At seventeen, he hadn’t hesitated to look over his shoulder at the man that sat directly behind him, but once he locked eyes with him, he felt enraptured. The breath had been stolen from his lungs, the warmth sucked out of the room, and when he spun back around, he could feel his heart pounding in his rib cage. 

It was strange that he didn’t know who the man was-- maybe a long lost relative, a distant cousin or something-- but no one else seemed bothered by him being there. In fact, no one seemed to even notice him at all. He was just a lone figure that existed in all black, his blue eyes bright as he took in everything around him, and when Bucky would dare to look his way, those eyes would be on him already, staring. 

At the burial, the man stood once again right behind Bucky, almost breathing down his neck. The man’s presence was demanding, so it was a mystery as to why no one acknowledged him. Even Becca, his little sister, hadn’t picked up her head when the man sat beside them at the reception while their parents wandered around. The hair on his body stood on edge at the man’s sudden proximity and when Bucky turned his head to look, the man was watching him, waiting. 

“Hi,” Bucky whispered, his voice nothing but a breath of air. He was watching the man closely, taking in the features of his face now that he was up close. The man had strong facial features; a jaw that was chiseled, a straight nose, sharp cheekbones, a defined brow line, and a shoulder-line to kill for. Next to Bucky, the man seemed larger than life, with a body that was nearly twice the size of Bucky’s, with muscles that were constrained in his dark, all-black suit. But it was his eyes… blue, sharp and ethereal almost, like they were glowing, that made Bucky’s breath hitch. 

Long, thick fingers clasp over the top of the table. “If I were to tell you that death is not the opposite of life, but part of it, would you agree?”

The question throws Bucky, naturally, because what a strange way to start conversation. Nonetheless, he thinks hard over it. Minutes pass, and the man doesn’t move away. His blue eyes bore into Bucky, scouring over him, waiting still. 

“Partly,” Bucky answers eventually, slow and even. “Death ends the life here but... it starts another… somewhere else.” 

The man tilts his head. “Somewhere else?”

“Heaven? Outer space? Eternal sleep, I don’t know. Maybe reincarnation?” Bucky shrugs. “I don’t think it really matters.” The man’s eyes track his mouth as he speaks. 

“And what of hell?”

Bucky puffs out an amused breath of air. Hell wasn’t exactly a standard point of discussion at a funeral, but his grandma had certainly been…something else. Like the time he broke his arm and she had asked what he had done to deserve it. Or when she had ‘cursed’ Becca when she accidently broke one of those stupid ornate lamps in her living room. Bucky knew that hell was a place where bad people went but his grandma wasn’t that horrid. Murderers and criminals went there, not his grandma. Still, he couldn’t help but chuckle softly at the man. “Did you know my grandma?” 

The man’s head tilted and there was a pause before he spoke, like he was weighing his words. “I knew her well. She… promised me something long ago and now I’m here to collect.”

“What was it?” Bucky asked, looking at the man. His grandma had a small fortune of wealth but his dad had already signed all the legal papers and no one else had been mentioned in the will. Certainly no one without the Barnes last name. So what could this man have possibly been promised? 

Glowing blue eyes look at him, dissecting him and memorizing him inside out. Bucky’s never felt something as intense. Part of him wants to run away but another part, a  _ larger  _ part, feels glued to where he sits, struck and mesmerized that even if he did try to get up, he’d be pinned back down. He feels powerless beneath the stare. Like prey facing down it’s predator. 

He expects an answer. He sits, waiting, but as time goes on, the man just keeps staring, raking his glowing blue eyes up and down Bucky’s face, keeping him in his place. Then, slowly, a smile breaks across the man’s face. It’s bright, stunningly white, and Bucky can’t look away even as the man stretches out his arm and places his hand on Bucky’s shoulder. “Call me Steve,” he instructs but the words feel more like an order instead. 

Bucky dips his chin in understanding. “You can call me Bucky.” 

“I know.”

* * *

Bucky doesn’t get hickeys anymore, at least not that he can see. 

Instead, he hears loud static-white noises when his Mom starts to pray at the kitchen table, and saying ‘Christ’ fills his mouth with the taste of something like cherry coke, but thicker, more coppery. Sometimes, when he’s lying in bed and almost asleep, teetering on the very edge of it, he can press down on the tender places left by the Devil’s mouth and the whole room will fall away until he’s lying beneath a harvest moon, the brightness of it swallowing up the stars.

“Hey, did you get a tattoo?” Sam asks once after an intense go at Mortal Kombat, squinting at Bucky’s neck. “I can’t tell what it is, looks sort of like initials.”

Bucky forces a laugh and dismisses it because he’s only eighteen and while he’s finished high school, he hasn’t started college yet so he’s still living under his parent’s room and they most  _ certainly  _ won’t allow a tattoo. He also ignores how, under Sam’s stare, the bruise left there by the Devil burns. 

When he gets home, Bucky locks himself in the bathroom, craning his neck to stare at himself in the mirror. It’s not a bruise— Sam was right, it does look sort of like initials. Foreign squiggles, and a thing that might be a snake biting its own tail. Maybe a bolt of lightning drawn through it.

Bucky presses on it lightly with his fingertips, and has to swallow against a sharp stab of longing; his ears are suddenly full of radio static and his own heartbeat.

It isn’t until he’s nose deep in the slim, oil-black book that the Devil left beneath his bed, that Bucky finds it. 

“It’s your name,” Bucky says, the next time he sees the Devil. 

The Devil only blinks, and then his gaze slides down, to where the mark still taints Bucky’s skin. He doesn’t touch it, but a shiver goes through Bucky all the same.

“It is my name,” the Devil answers calmly enough. His eyes are yellow, hungry. “It suits you.”

Bucky huffs. “What, you just put your name over everything?”

“What’s mine, yes.”

Bucky blinks. Opens his mouth, and then— shuts it again.

“It belongs on you,” the Devil says into the silence. His long fingers start to undo Bucky’s belt, pulling it out loop by loop, never tearing his eyes away. “I could give you a necklace of them, ear to ear. Down your spine, across your ribcage, wherever you want.”

“That’d be hard to explain,” Bucky says weakly as the cool midnight air strikes his bare legs. He can’t begin to imagine the things his mom would say if he suddenly had a collar of strange, squiggly tattoos striking against his pale skin. 

“They do fade, eventually.” The Devil glances at him, and the corner of his mouth curls. “If I want it to.”

Bucky’s arms wrap around the Devil’s neck as strong arms suddenly pull him up. “And do you want them to?” Bucky murmurs against burning lips. 

“Never.”

So they remain. The Devil does another one of his magic spells to where only Bucky can see the marks; to everyone else, they don’t exist.

* * *

Four months after meeting Steve, things start to change. 

The discomfort starts off small. When he steps into the church he’s been attending since before he could walk, the nausea boils up in his stomach, making him feel dizzy enough that he has to close his eyes when he sits down on the pew. His mom pulls out medicine from her purse and passes it to him, thinking that’s all he’ll need and they can continue to attend worship. He doesn’t tell her that it doesn’t work and that when he tries to read the scripture, the words are too blurry and it hurts even more than before. 

Or, how wearing his cross necklace somehow ends up getting wrapped around his neck and gets yanked tight, choking him. 

Or, how the cross that is hanging up on the wall in the living room always tips upside down when he walks in or it just falls to the floor altogether despite his dad saying over and over that it’s just a faulty nail.

He notices the pattern. 

As the weeks go on, the pain walking into the church gets stronger and stronger until he’s sweating and freezing all at once and he feels something dribble from his nose. When he reaches up, his fingers are pulled back with red staining against his pale skin. His heart jolts and as he looks down, he sees that several drops have landed on the Bible in his lap. Hastily, he slams it shut and shoves it into the built-in shelf in front of him before he extracts himself from the room altogether and runs to the car. The very second he steps out the doors of the church, as if by the snap of fingers, the feelings all elude him and he can breathe again. 

When he gets home, he hides his necklace in the back of his closet and throws the cross hanging in the living room into the trash before either of his parents can see. 

He locks his bedroom door shut and as he turns around, it’s no longer a shock to find Steve awaiting on his bed. Steve’s in his all-black suit, with his back up against the headboard, legs crossed at the ankles, and his glowing blue eyes are locked on Bucky. 

“W-what are you?”

Steve doesn’t blink. Doesn’t move. Doesn’t even take a breath. “You know what I am.”

And he should. He thinks he does, but to admit it… it scares him shitless. He knew it was strange that Steve popped up in places he shouldn’t be able to. He knew that it wasn’t by coincidence that he was making perfect scores in school when he was turning in half complete homework and not studying for exams. It wasn’t at random that when he melted into Steve’s arms, the rest of the world burned into the background. 

“Should I be scared?”

“Are you?”

Is he? Did he scream and pull away from their first time together, when Steve had held his head into the pillow and fucked him from behind? Had he closed his mouth when Steve had kissed him and he had tasted blood and something sharp? No, he’d stayed there, eagerly awaiting Steve’s every action, wanting the man fully and completely, feeling his insides thrum with life and the promise of something powerful. 

“...No,” he answered.

“You should be.”

“Maybe…” he licked his lips while also stepping toward the bed, getting closer and closer until he was able to press his knee into his mattress. He felt bold the way Steve’s eyes raked over him, piercing into his very soul. “But I’m not.”

Steve didn’t pull away as Bucky clambered on top of him, straddling his lap. Long, sharp fingers curled into Bucky’s waist. “You are something else Bucky Barnes,” Steve whispered as he pulled Bucky in closer. 

Bucky leaned forward and pressed their foreheads together. “And that terrifies you, doesn’t it?”

“More than you could ever imagine.”

* * *

One night, Bucky dreams of something he doesn’t have words for, a place he can’t describe, except that it is bright and terrible and all at once intimately familiar. A place where he feels beloved and wanted. 

He would say that there weren’t hills but there were, and there were no houses but there were, all of them standing empty and perfect along a golden street that wasn’t a street at all. It led him through them. It led him to the edge of the world.  _ It  _ was light, bright and white, and it told him that it loved him more than anyone could. Just as he stood with his toes over the edge of nothing, and a wisp of light outstretched toward him, something was yanking him back. Something that was rough and dark and almost violent as it pulled him away, further and further from the place that wasn’t a place. 

When he wakes up, he’s sobbing and clawing at his chest. He wants to dig his own heart out, to somehow stop feeling  _ It _ . 

The Devil is the one who pries Bucky’s hands away, taking them and pressing them against the mattress as massive black wings spread out above him. Bucky struggles against him for a moment, but the Devil is the weight of the world and is pressed against Bucky’s body. He squeezes his eyes shut, trying to remember it, trying to forget, trying to-- 

Eventually, Bucky gives up and lets his head back, panting for breath and letting out choking sobs in between. “I’m o-okay,” Bucky finally says. But he’s still crying and he can feel his eyes burning. “I’m okay. Steve, I’m fine.” 

The Devil’s hands are cold when they leave his wrists and come up to cradle Bucky’s face. There’s a beat, then Bucky feels a cool brush against his skin as the Devil wipes away his tears. 

When Bucky opens his eyes, it’s Steve that he sees. Glowing blue eyes, blond hair, and pale skin hover above him. Steve leans in and kisses his forehead, then his right temple. Bucky wishes he could stop trembling, wishes he could laugh at himself before kissing Steve back, but he doesn’t feel like laughing. Instead, his left arm hooks behind Steve’s neck and pulls him in closer. 

Steve kisses his temple again, then strokes the place with his fingers. “Hello, Bucky,” Steve whispers. Kisses his temple again. “Hello, my sweet.”

“Hey,” Bucky says hoarsely. Breathes in, then breathes out. “Sorry,” he continues. He’s sure he looks a mess, with snot and tears but Steve’s still stroking his cheek with the back of his knuckles. “Sorry, that was…I don’t know what that was.”

“It’s probably different than I remember it,” Steve says quietly. The cool touch of his hand is comforting. “Lights on in the houses, people sleeping in the hills… It’s been a while since I went home.”

“Went—” and Bucky stops.

Steve is watching him, twin embers set in the shadows of his eyes. Bucky thinks of the brightness of that star, how it had burned to be near it. How it tried to reach out. He remembers now, that when he was pulled back, he had been plunged into the heart of the fire that lit all other fires. 

He had burned, and burned, and burned, but even that… was joy.

“You ever going to show me your current place of residence, then?” Bucky asks, and Steve laughs, a tension Bucky hadn’t noticed before ebbing out of his shoulders. He’s not a mountain suddenly, and when he fits himself to Bucky’s side, his skin is almost warm where he brushes against Bucky’s shoulder and neck. A star, burning itself out in the crook of Bucky’s arm.

After a moment, there’s a rustling noise, and the Devil’s wings settle over Bucky’s legs. “Not yet,” Steve answers. Moments of silence drift by, where Steve keeps caressing and holding on tight, and Bucky’s halfway back to sleep again. “He can’t have you,” Steve whispers into Bucky’s ear. “He can have everyone else… but not you. You’re mine, Bucky.”

* * *

“Holy shit,” Bucky sighs, because the Devil’s kissing a line down his throat and it’s like water moving impossibly slowly down his neck— the touch of the Devil’s mouth is pure liquid, sinking in through Bucky’s skin and taking up residence in his blood. He’s drunk with it, the divine pleasure of having this. As though having the Devil there, cool and gentle as rain, wasn’t proof enough of God.

Bucky lets his head tip back. “Jesus Christ , yeah, that’s—”

It happens too fast, and suddenly the  Devil’s grabbing Bucky by the back of his neck and yanking his head up. Sharp stabs of pain are at the base of h is skull and he feels something trickle down. “ _ No _ ,” the Devil snarls. His eyes are slitted and poison-yellow; glowing faintly with that hard, predatory light.

Bucky’s heart is beating fast, and he wonders for a delirious moment if he’s about to get eaten. He’d be lying if he said he hadn’t considered that a possibility, with how the snake’s eyes and scales and how the Devil looks at him sometimes, like kissing is nice, but swallowing Bucky whole would be more efficient. 

The Devil only looks at him, though, eyes sparking and hard. Finally, dizzy, Bucky remembers to breathe.

“Do you understand?” the Devil asks as Bucky takes a desperate gulp of air. “No one else. No other names. Not His, not— not anyone’s but mine. Nod.”

Bucky exhales shakily, and does as he’s told.

The Devil looks at him, unblinking, for another too-long while. He only hesitates slightly before leaning in to kiss Bucky again. It tastes bitter, like licking pennies, but Bucky lets him. He shuts his eyes like he always does and kisses the Devil back— even puts his hand at the Devil’s jaw to show that he understands. 

Then, days later, he pretends that he isn’t still thinking about it. When the Devil’s fingernails are digging into his neck like talons, and his cock is tearing Bucky open, their mouths molded together in a bloody bath. Underneath the terror, he feels violent joy and the urge to demand the same in turn: no one’s name but mine.

But Bucky’s not sure if he can ask the Devil for fidelity, even with the bloody marks of his talons at his neck, the initials that mark his body.

* * *

For some reason, Bucky had thought that the Devil would stop looking at him, once some of the novelty wore away. Or maybe he just assumed that— now that the Devil could touch him, could map the contours of Bucky’s body with his fingertips, and the line of Bucky’s mouth with his mouth, he wouldn’t be so interested in staring.

Instead, the Devil seems to have taken it as an invitation to look at his fill, without shame or the feeling of time running out.

Bucky probably wouldn’t have minded or even noticed, except he can feel when the Devil’s eyes are on him; the lightest rasp of something dry and cold across his skin. Bucky’s never thought of himself as the jealous type, but he likes the sharp scrape of the Devil’s stare. Even just for that second, the Devil is his and belongs to no other. 

Other times the Devil’s gaze dips lower, that same cold slithering beneath Bucky’s collar, under his shirt. Curling up there, seemingly content, as Bucky struggles to have a conversation with one of his friends or family members.

Only now, when Bucky lifts his head and catches him looking, the Devil doesn’t look away, doesn’t even have the decency to act caught-out. Instead, more often than not, he just cocks his head and smirks.

“You’re going to kill me,” he breathes as the Devil’s thumb digs into the soft skin at the crook of his arm. Bucky’s being eased onto his back while his fingers greedily pull at the Devil’s skin, trying to get him closer because just as much as the Devil could swallow him whole, he could do just the same to this being above him.

“Beautiful,” the Devil murmurs back. Bucky’s not sure whether he means Bucky or Bucky’s death but he still lets Bucky kiss him, and pull him closer. 

“Like what you see?” Bucky asks, grinning. 

The Devil pulls back and spins around, leaning up against Bucky’s headboard before gathering Bucky in his lap. He holds Bucky’s chin between his fingers, blue eyes imploring and eagle-sharp. “I always like to look at you,” the Devil says. “You know that.”

“It’s just the one, human shape,” Bucky says, pretending that his heart isn’t hammering out of its cage because no one should look at anyone like that. The world would grind to a halt, if people went around staring at each other like that. 

“Yes,” the Devil says, and Bucky raises his eyebrows. “I mean that you are right, it is just one human shape.”

Bucky stopped flinching when the Devil reached for him a long time ago, but he still has to tell himself to be very still under those hands when they slide down to his throat. 

“But here,” the Devil says, his fingertips hovering just over Bucky’s collarbone. Bucky’s close enough to see the Devil’s eyes are pale yellow, his pupils slitted. “I remember when your ancestors evolved this bone, and these muscles. A hundred hundred years, and a hundred hundred more… we watched you. Millennia of watching you swim and crawl in the mud— and then suddenly, you could look up. The first miracle. That was all you wanted to do for a century or so,” the Devil says quietly. His hands are still hovering over Bucky’s skin, but Bucky can feel them all the same; burning like a flame outside his body. “You were such small things, small and wet and staring at the sky.”

“I—” Bucky breathes, but the Devil ignores him.

“Your wrists,” the Devil says instead, his hands skimming Bucky’s shoulders, down, down to Bucky’s arms and the sharp knobs of his elbows, then where flesh gives in to bone. “Cain threw a rock at Abel, you know, and it struck him—” Bucky makes a choked-off noise when the Devil reaches up and palms the back of Bucky’s head. “There. He died of it, and their mother cried for days. I could tell you every muscle and tiny bone in his wrist that meant that boy could throw a stone hard enough to knock his brother’s brain out. The history of that first murder, written in your skin.”

With his hand on the nape of Bucky’s neck, the Devil is very close. His breath smells of something unfamiliar— chemical and almost alien, but sharp enough that it feels spicy and burns as Bucky breathes it in. 

“But my favorite is this,” the Devil says, and Bucky jolts when the Devil digs his fingers into Bucky’s hips. They’re cold, even through Bucky’s jeans. “A couple minor genetic mutations in your genes, completely harmless, hardly worth mentioning. But it means the crest of your right hip bone is slightly higher than your left. It changes your gait a little, that’s all.”

“Why is—why’s that your favorite, then?” Bucky breathes.

The Devil smiles, very slightly. “Of all your parts, all the many histories inscribed there on your insides…that one is only yours.”

“Oh,” Bucky begins, and then can’t remember how he planned on finishing. He’s looking at the Devil’s mouth now, and thinking about kissing him. Thinking about his insides, and being swallowed whole because if the Devil’s hands go any lower, Bucky won’t be held accountable for his actions. He’s been reduced to a thing of warm honey and desire, all of him, every little bit. 

“I hate to give the Old Man credit for much of anything...,” the Devil says, so quietly that Bucky can barely hear him over the sound of their mingled breathing. Out of the corner of his eye, there’s something moving— too big for the room and yet impossibly still in here with them, something that’s alive in the air. 

“Bucky,” the Devil says softly, and Bucky swallows, meeting his gaze again. “I will give Him credit for you. Only you. It’s as if he knew you would belong to me all along… making you fearfully and wonderfully perfect, to bring me down.”

Bucky doesn’t mind, even when the Devil’s mouth turns to marble and then to ash as Bucky kisses him.

* * *

“Why the name Steve?” Bucky asks, when he’s caged against the Devil’s chest and black, strong wings settle over his back. They’re both stark naked and his heart is still returning to normal and his ear is straining to hear the proof of the Devil’s own, but the noise inside of Steve’s chest is silent. 

One of Steve’s arms lifts up and his palm trails against the notches in Bucky’s spine as it slides upward, before his claws sink into Bucky’s hair. For a long moment, his question is met with silence until, “It was the name that I chose for myself. All of the others… they’re names that have been given to me by people I care not about. As to why that name in particular…” the man shrugs, “... it means to be victorious. To wear the crown above all others.” 

He can see why the Devil would want to be called that. And it does solve the mystery of why the Devil would choose such a common name, something as common as James. There’s also something intimate in knowing a name that no one else does because as far as Bucky is concerned, he’s never heard of anyone refer to the Devil as Steve. Church goers would probably faint to give the Devil any human qualities, making him seem less than almighty. 

“And who else calls you Steve?” Bucky asks. It’s a question he’s almost scared to know, because if there is another… or others… then he wouldn’t be as special as he thought. The fear of Steve’s lack of fidelity has always gnawed at him but who was he, a mere human, to be anything more than a simple blimp in time for Steve to consume himself with. But now, he asked and he doesn’t realize he’s holding his breath until Steve is kissing against his neck. 

“No others,” Steve whispers. “It’s just you, Bucky. Just you. From the beginning of time, to the end of the line, and then into eternity.” 

Bucky closes his eyes, and thanks the stars for the words he hears. His hands clutch against Steve, feeling loved more than ever.

* * *

One night, Bucky is fast asleep when he’s awoken to bright lights and the sharp, alarmed voice of his mother shouting his name. 

He sits straight up in bed, his blankets flying to the side, and his chest is heaving up and down as his eyes shoot straight to his mother standing in the doorframe of his room. 

“What? What is it?!” 

His mother’s face is pale. She’s staring at his bed with wide eyes, petrified to the core. The sight terrifies him and Steve’s name is on the tip of his tongue, ready to call out for protection. But it sizzles as his mom turns off his light again, only to flip the switch back on. She does it again, then again, never tearing her eyes away from the spot of Bucky’s bed. 

“Mom?” he says, carefully, and he turns his head to look, thinking that maybe Steve is already there. But there’s nothing and he looks back to his horror-filled mother. 

“I-I thought I s-saw--” 

“Saw what?”

She’s still staring. She blinks hard, shaking her head. “I don’t know…” Then, she reaches her hand out and waves him toward her. “C’mon, you’re not sleeping in here.” 

“Mom--”

“Listen to me, James! Get up, now!” 

When he scrambles from his bed, his blankets wrap around his ankles and try to hold him back but his mom wretches him free and pushes him toward the door. He can hear her muttering, sounds that seem like the beginning of a prayer, but it’s just static in his ears. 

His mom slams the door shut behind them. Where her hands touch his arm and back, the spots burn, burn, burn. 

* * *

He feels something inside of him. Something that gnaws at his stomach and tries to crawl up his throat. 

It’s just past 3 a.m and his entire family is dead asleep, so no one hears him heave into the toilet. No one sees as his hands clutch at the seat, his knuckles going ice white at the pressure he holds on with. 

Afterward, as he brushes his teeth, he stares hard into the mirror. His eyes absorb the image in front of him, seeing how pale his skin has gotten. He’s so white that it seems there’s no blood running in his veins. And he’s cold to the touch but he doesn’t  _ feel  _ cold. 

He tears his eyes away and spits into the sink, seeing the pink splotches pop out from the white toothpaste. He puts his toothbrush away and goes to turn the sink off, but he stops as something else catches his attention. 

The veins of his wrist are dark. Dark, dark purple, almost black, replacing the soft hues of green and blue that used to be there. He feels as if he should be alarmed, maybe even panicked, but he feels nothing but calm as he stares down at them. 

Slowly, he slides down the wall of the bathroom, huddling in on himself. When the urge to cough rears up, his fingers snag a piece of toilet paper just in time to catch the liquid spewing past his lips. Blood and blackness swirl together in the white of the toilet paper, staining it. 

That, along with the tar in the toilet, gets flushed out of his sight. 

He scrunches in on himself, holding himself together, trembling but smiling because he can taste the Devil on his tongue. He can taste Steve. 

* * *

The Devil’s mouth is around his cock, enveloping him in warmth and steals his breath from his very lungs. His fingers are knotted tight in Steve’s hair, like he’s trying to hold onto this form but also wanting to feel it shift beneath his fingers. 

As always, the not knowing is what drives him mad, feeling his thoughts run a mile a minute trying to figure out what could be holding him down and pulling such feelings from him that no one else has ever before. 

“I want to see you…” he whispers through his teeth. He’s never asked before and all this time it’s been a taboo between them, something that neither of them brought up because it was obvious that Steve didn’t  _ want  _ him to see. But after so long, after so many moments together where Bucky came undone and Steve lost control, he believes that he has the privilege to do it. Maybe, just maybe, he truly does have some power over Steve, even though the mere thought of that sends Bucky reeling into unknown territory. 

Still, the words are out there and the Devil sucks in a sharp breath, and the hitch of his shoulders sends a thrill through Bucky because suddenly, Steve is hovering above him and slowly, the cloud over his eyes gets lifted.

Remarkably, it’s still the Steve that he knows, but the longer he looks, he can see how his edges are almost blurred, how his revealed skin shimmers as if it’s trying to change. Steve tips his chin down, forcing their gazes to lock, and Bucky can see all the want collected in his expression, how utterly raw and laid-open that Steve is. Bucky’s never known anyone who was more beautiful than Steve at that moment, looking at Bucky that way. 

Steve’s shirt is still on, but his collar is gaping around a throat ringed with pale skin that’s stained with ink-black venomous strands that curl up his neck. His eyes are glowing and sharp, unblinking, and painted in the yellow that screams of warning but somehow makes Bucky’s limbs relax even further. 

When he was younger, the way people talked, he’d figure the Devil would be ugly, with all that strangeness and horror-- and yet...

Bucky’s hands go to Steve’s face, holding both sides, and he smiles. “Is that where the expression comes from?” 

“What?” 

“Handsome devil…” 

Suddenly, Steve is pulling back and Bucky whines at the loss, but he stops when he realizes that Steve is only sitting up, moving to settle between Bucky’s legs. 

“I want you to pray.” 

The words throw Bucky and his mouth pops open in surprise. “I--? But you said not to use the name…” 

“Pray. To me.” 

“Oh,” Bucky exhales, and he’s so hot it might as well be steam that covers his body. The Devil feels like a storm moving against Bucky’s skin. He’s never prayed to anyone except for-- but he feels the thrum of another name pulse through him and he’s chanting it over and over in his skull, and he can feel how the Devil shivers as Bucky’s knees are pulled further apart. 

He keeps calling the Devil’s name, enchanting words that make him feel stronger and more powerful, and his eyes stay slitted open as he watches the Devil’s clothes vanish and too many images flash before his eyes as Steve enters him with a hiss. He sees black wings spread out, he sees the glint of metal, the pattern of scales, the feel of feathers, something liquid and something stone-hard, he feels claws and he feels fingers, and it’s hot and cold and everything in between. He hears screams and moans of pain and the sound of fire crackling and flames burning and dull bells ringing. 

But as the Devil burrows himself deeper into Bucky, to the hilt, he also hears his name being called, like he’s being beckoned to a place he doesn’t know, by thousands and millions of souls he doesn’t know. A place where he wants to be. A place that he can call home. 

The world goes still as the Devil pumps into him. Every sound, every feeling, every thought disappears and it’s only the two of them, the feeling of the Devil all around him, consuming him, devouring him. Then Bucky’s coming, and it feels like a gate is opened and he explodes as the Devil holds him tight, spilling into his insides. 

His eyes burn as the brightness of the flames scorch into him but the pain only lasts for a second, even less than that, and it isn’t until the Devil moves over him again that Bucky realizes he isn’t in his bedroom anymore. He’s in a place he’s never seen before but the sky is burning like an ember and there are six moons that are blood orange and looming over them both. Gone are the bedsheets and the mattress beneath them, and now, he’s lying on top of a slab of granite stone, where grooves twist and turn beneath him. He feels something burning at his neck but when he tries to reach up and touch it, the Devil holds his wrist back. Instead, the Devil leans back in and captures Bucky’s lips, where their tongues taste of copper and something warm fills Bucky’s mouth. 

When the Devil leans their foreheads together, he whispers against Bucky’s lips. “Welcome home, my husband.” 

Bucky can only smile. 

**Author's Note:**

> If anyone is feeling super generous and would like to buy me a coffee of support, here's my ko-fi link: https://ko-fi.com/lordelannette


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